PrintMarch 28, 2009
Obamanomics is not economics, it's ideology
Robert Reich, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and the former Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor thinks we are all idiots. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Obamanomics Isn't About Big Government," Mr. Reich tells us that catastrophic government spending, un-constitutional legislation, uncontrolled earmarks, corruption, cronyism-bloated bureaucracies, class warfare, and social engineering are "trickle-up economics.""One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: No ordinary man could be such a fool."
- George Orwell
Reaganomics surely marked the beginning of one of the longest bull markets in American history and generated enormous gains at the top. But its benefits were not widely shared. After the Reagan tax cuts, growth in the median wage slowed, adjusted for inflation. After George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the median wage dropped. Meanwhile, an increasing share of total income went to the top 1% of income earners. In 1980, before Reagan took office, the highest-paid 1% took home 9% of total national income. By 2007, before the economy melted down, the richest 1% was taking home 22%.
Obamanomics, by contrast, holds that an economy grows best from the bottom up. The president proposes to increase taxes on the highest 2% of income earners starting in 2011. Those tax increases will fund more Pell grants allowing lower-income children to attend college, better pay for teachers that show they're worth it, broader access to health care, improved infrastructure, and more basic research. These and related expenditures are designed to help Americans become more productive. You might think of it as "trickle up" economics.
Perhaps he has, as so many of the echo chamber academics from the left, begun to mistake the accolades of post-pubescent undergrads as confirmation of his own genius. Regardless, he doesn't really believe the nonsense he pens. How could he, with all the evidence to the contrary and the long term prosperity the nation has enjoyed prior to Democrat ascendancy? No, Mr. Reich is attempting to justify the wealth redistribution and social engineering the left wants so desperately to implement. Success is not success, you see, if it is not "fair" as defined by radical academics such as Reich and our new President. Facts are easy to invent, and easier to misrepresent. Ideology inspires his comments, not economics.
Reich uses all the buzz phrases that fill the populist propaganda that so successfully snowed the American people. "Something for nothing" is a powerful enticement, especially when it justifies classic "take from the rich and give to the poor" theft by wrapping it in moral arguments. In classic political double-speak, he tells us we need to use our hard earned taxes to invest in ourselves, "Obamanomics is premised on the central importance of public investments in the productivity of Americans."
A nice phrase that grows increasingly absurd when chewed over. It is leftist boilerplate, identical to the promises that Democrat socialists give nationwide, eventually made manifest in high crime rates, failing schools, political corruption, skyrocketing taxes, and bankrupt budgets. Eventually, the promises come up against the wall of hard reality. It's the Chicago way, except at the national level you do not have your allies in congress to bail you out, they are your co-conspirators. It all catches up, and the people bear the burden. You have to pay for the electoral bribes someday.
A nice phrase that grows increasingly absurd when chewed over. It is leftist boilerplate, identical to the promises that Democrat socialists give nationwide, eventually made manifest in high crime rates, failing schools, political corruption, skyrocketing taxes, and bankrupt budgets. Eventually, the promises come up against the wall of hard reality. It's the Chicago way, except at the national level you do not have your allies in congress to bail you out, they are your co-conspirators. It all catches up, and the people bear the burden. You have to pay for the electoral bribes someday.
But Reich is a fortune teller and seer, who can predict the future:
In 10 years, taxes are expected to fall to around 19% of GDP, a lower level than the late 1990s. Spending is expected to drop to around 22.5% of GDP, about where it was under Ronald Reagan -- including nondefense discretionary spending at about 3.6% of GDP, its lowest since data on this were first collected in 1962.
This is not just a rosy prediction on Reich's part, it is a lie. The Congressional Budget Office assesses that Obama's budget would double budget deficits to almost ten trillion dollars while taxes would increase by several trillion dollars. These monumental increases will be painfully felt by all of us, not just the hated "class" of the rich. They will cripple the nation for decades, if not forever.
Obama's budget multiplies the deficit so far beyond any reasonable level one must assume he is purposely trying to destroy the economy. So when Obama, in his wise and sonorous voice, makes the statement that we are "moving from an era of borrow and spend", he is lying, purposely and calculatingly. We are in fact moving from an era of "borrow and spend" into an era of "steal and embezzle" and Obama and Congress are the mafia dons that run the "business." Their business is to remake us in the image of "social justice" that one finds bouncing around our elite universities.
Robert Reich is a radical fellow traveler, whom we foolishly let teach our children as he helps Obama steal their future. His ideology makes him a popular guy around campus and in the fever swamps of the far left, but as the Obama-effect wears off, as it increasingly will, he will need the solace of those quiet halls.
When the full realization of what Obama and his minions are doing to the country hits the average citizen, there will be anger and outrage and revolt. It is already growing. It is hard to believe that we are just a few months into this administration. What will it look like in 2010 for the mid-term elections? One can only hope, for the good of the nation, it will be very bad indeed for Reich, the US Congress and Obama.
